[Review] Shadowhunters S02E02 – A Door Into the Dark

Hey, guys! I’m back again to review the latest episode of Shadowhunters. For me, while initially watching this episode it was a lot harder for me to get through it despite the absence of Jace being physically and mentally tortured in this episode. A lot of this episode really gave us some great interaction between all of the characters and some of my favorite ships. Also, we got to see Raphel Santiago for the first time since the season finale, which I was very happy to see. However, before I get into any of that I want to start off as always with talking about the things that I loved about this episode.

Warning: This is not a Clary Fray friendly recap (or site for that matter). I’m also not a huge fan of Clary and Jace’s romantic relationship or the love triangle between Jace/Clary/Simon. I’m also very opinionated, and I often call out any character that has fucked up. So if you have a problem with me throwing legitimate criticism at your favorite characters you need to press the back button. I’m open to civil debate, I will not tolerate any trolls under any circumstances.

What I Loved about It

First of all, I really love that Alec told Clary where exactly she can go. He told her everything that had been screaming about since season one and an actuality what I said in last episode’s review: that was Clary just runs impulsively into situations without carrying about any of the consequences that might occur from her getting into those situations. Clary is one of the biggest reasons why Alec, Simon Isabelle, and Jace’s life went straight to hell in a handbasket this past season and she never owns up to that. (but more on that later).

I also really loved the Clary and Isabelle scene. Even though I didn’t feel the slightest bit of sympathy for Clary. Honestly, the Clizzy shipper inside me was just was squeeing at all the Clary and Isabelle interaction in this episode.

I also wanted to take another moment to squee about the Simon and Raphel scenes! I was really disappointed in the last episode that there wasn’t a cameo appearance from Raphael (David Castro). However, in this episode, Raphael was back being his usual sharply dressed self and exchanging antagonistic banter with Simon. And yeah, it still hurts me to see them so at odds with each other, but I was still happy to see them interacting with each other at all.

Another relationship I was glad to see Jocelyn and Luke, although Luke did call out Jocelyn for her shitty life choices, I was really pleased to see them have a parental powwow this episode. One of my favorite parts of this show is that there are so many interracial relationships and families in it. And this episode made it really clear to me and to everyone else that despite Valentine being Clary’s biological father, is actually Luke who is really Clary’s dad. I think this type representation is so important, especially for people like me who are raising biracial children or is a part of a biracial family.

And speaking of Shadowhunters progressive message, I’m going to talk a little bit about how awesome it was to watch Isabelle, this small petite Latina woman beat the holy hell out of this huge musclebound white guy. I especially like how overprotective Alec was and then how he was totally going to get in the fight with this guy who was like three times his size, but Isabelle is like: “I got this.” It just made my feminist heart swell to watch that scene.

Another great subplot in this episode was Simon’s subplot and his interaction with Magnus. Because it expanded on the interaction between Magnus and Simon that season one during the 1.12 ‘Malec’. However, in this episode, not only do we really get to see more of that interaction, but we also get more peeks into Magnus’s past. I was also tickled pink when Magness showed compassion towards Simon in the end and took him under his wing. It was especially poignant to me because we saw early on in this episode and in the previous episode, that Simon really had no one to turn to. For Clary, he burned every bridge that he had and he can’t go back to his old life. So, it was a welcome sight to see someone actually giving a crap about Simon and his needs for once.

About the author

When I'm not roasting Cassandra Clare, or her creations, I actually have a job as a Digital Artist. When I'm not working, I'm either reading books, or chasing around my nieces and nephews, and fangirling over my OTP's, and re-examining my life choices.